Speciation Everywhere

Friday, December 23, 2011

Real Surfing Videos

I've been filming surfing videos for years. When it comes to recording the surf, there are few better things you can do than record right from the water. For example, the Go Pro Water Proof Camera is what I use to record my surfing

You can capture phenomenal angles that can't be achieved from filming on the beach. This has huge implications for the field of water proof camera filming.

Let's say you are going on a family vacation, your youngest child wants to go play in the water, and you want to capture their moments! Or your son's or daughter's first ever surf session! What better way to capture their memories than with an awesome water proof camera!?

Water proof ocean cameras are often very heavy duty, water resistant, and great buys. You can videotape your scuba diving, your water sports, your vacation, and trips to the beach. I highly recommend grabbing one, and creating your own surfing videos

Having humanoid robots mop your floors, calculate your finances, sweep the streets, and perform other mundane chores may seem like a good idea at first, but giving robots control over even the simplest of human tasks leaves the door wide open to a host of problems. Futuristic movies such as I, Robot, The Matrix, and Wall-E, describe all-too-realistic scenarios where artificial intelligence evolves to take control of civilization. As for real life, humanoid robots might only start by performing simple mechanical tasks, but as they become more skilled and gain the ability to make independent decisions, they could end up replacing the workers of entire factories. Soon, millions of people could find themselves out of work and the United States could fall into an economic slump. Eventually, this could trigger a worldwide depression. It’s clear that the introduction of humanoid robots into our society could put the entire world economy at risk.

ROBOTA is a humanoid robot that stands forty-five centimeters tall. Special sensors, motors, and microprocessors enable her to move, speak, and respond to touch. This makes ROBOTA the perfect interactive toy for children who are learning appropriate speech and behavior.

Parents can teach ROBOTA things they want their children to learn and have ROBOTA reinforce this behavior. For example, since ROBOTA can imitate movement, she can teach children to speak and dance. And, because it’s known that children with Autism Disorder often interact more positively with machines than with humans, scientists see great potential in having ROBOTA help those kids with their speech and social skills. People around the world are excited about what ROBOTA can do. Don’t let your kids be the last to benefit from what she has to offer. You need to meet ROBOTA, today!

Monday, November 14, 2011

Who hates doing the dishes or making their bed? I bet there isn’t a person in this room who hasn’t dreamed of owning a humanoid robot. The great thing about owning one would be that you could communicate with it... like: “Hey, could you rinse the dishes better the next time you wash them? My glass of water tastes soapy.” Now... the question I have for you today is... should we really welcome the introduction of humanoid robots into our lives?Scientists are designing advanced robots to assist people in their daily lives. Some of these robots are... well, they’re just machines. However, humanoid robots will be altogether different because they’ll have a higher range of capabilities. But the most important difference between ordinary robots and humanoid robots is that they’ll look, think, and act like humans. Scientists’ success in developing effective automated telephone attendants is ample proof that science will one day bring us highly intelligent, humanlike robots.* Researchers developing humanoid robots assure us they’ll be programmed to tell right from wrong, which will help them to make decisions, and to learn from their mistakes. The result? They’ll become even more intelligent. Female Student: Why do robots have to learn to become intelligent? Can’t they be programmed to be intelligent in the first place? Male Professor: Good question. Basically, it’s impossible to program a robot to be highly functional in all situations. Programmers would have to dream up every possible experience a humanoid robot could encounter. It would be like trying to create a catalog about life itself. That’s why researchers are programming humanoid robots to mimic human cognition... the mental processes that we use in thinking. These robots acquire information by observing... through sensory mechanisms that allow the robot to see, hear, touch, and feel the world around them.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Today, many films rely heavily on special effects to help tell their stories. Special effects can be divided into three categories: optical effects, mechanical effects, and the more recent computer-generated imagery, otherwise known as CGI, like from pixar. Mechanical effects typically use things such as props, scale models, and pyrotechnics during live-action shooting. Common mechanical effects include artificial tidal waves and exploding cars. Optical effects are those achieved photographically, either with the camera itself or during post-production processes. A typical optical effect might be a camera shot representing the view of someone peeping through a keyhole. As the name suggests, computer–generated imagery uses computers to create special effects. By making people appear to fly or catch bullets in their mouths, CGI makes the unbelievable believable.

The "Three R’s" approach of replacing, reducing, and refining animal use in scientific research is recommended by the Humane Society of the United States. Our lab should adopt this approach as well. First, we should replace our animal experiments with those that take advantage of alternative methods like computer modeling, controlled human studies, or tissue studies. Chemicals that need to be screened for toxicity, for example, could be tested on living tissue samples instead of live animals. Second, we should reduce the number of animals used in our experiments. It seems excessive to use hundreds of animals when a few dozen might suffice. This is especially so if the experiments are those that cause pain and suffering. Finally, we should refine the experiments so that animal distress is kept to a minimum. Some of our experiments, especially toxicology tests, cause the animals to suffer for days, if not weeks, before we euthanize them. I realize that is because we cannot use anesthesia for those test subjects, but perhaps we can try to shorten the number of days they must suffer before they die.

Male Professor: As you all know, in September 2005, a team of international scientists were able to draft a genome sequence of the common chimpanzee and compare it to the human genome. The results? Over 98 percent of our DNA is identical with that of chimps, a fact that suggests chimps are biologically more closely related to humans than they are to gorillas even. Other methods of comparisons give a more conservative estimate that says the differences are closer to 4 or 5 percent. At the end of the day, however, it’s safe to say that chimpanzees are humans’ closest biological cousins.

Female Student: Wait, did you say that chimps are closer to humans than they are to gorillas? That sounds crazy to me. Chimps and gorillas look so much more similar to each other than chimps and humans.

Male Professor: Yes, well, we’re talking genetics here, not appearances. And that particular fact comes from the Jane Goodall Institute, which is a world-class chimpanzee research facility. But anyway, that’s not the most important issue here. Today, I want to talk about the pros and cons of using great apes, which include the chimps and gorillas, but also orangutans and bonobos, in scientific research.

Because of their similarities to humans, the great apes, and chimpanzees in particular, are often viewed as appropriate stand-ins for humans in studies of disease processes, experimental procedures, and behavioral research. A recent study at the California National Primate Research Center tested whether damage to lungs caused by exposure to air pollutants could be reversed if the exposure were removed. Researchers hoped to gain a deeper understanding of asthma and other respiratory diseases. In terms of research for experimental procedures, scientists have been using primate stem cells to learn about how stem cells can be used in regenerative medicine. The idea of stem cell research is that cells damaged by disease, injury, or aging can be replaced by regenerated cells. Such cell therapies are particularly promising for Parkinson's Disease, a neurodegenerative disease which causes movement and sensory difficulties.

Particularly interesting have been behavioral studies of apes. A study published in 2007 reveals that chimpanzees show altruism, a trait thought to be found only in humans. In one study of chimpanzees at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, a chimpanzee would try to enter a locked room that had food in it. Another chimpanzee who was watching would unlock the door to help the first chimp enter the room. This altruistic behavior wasn’t limited to just other apes, either. In another test, a chimp would observe a human reaching through bars to try to get a stick that was on the other side. The stick would be placed out of the human’s reach. In these tests, the chimpanzees would spontaneously pass the stick to the person, even if they were not rewarded, and even if the stick was far away and required the chimp to climb several feet to get to it.

Female Student: Wow, that’s really surprising. You’d think that chimpanzees wouldn’t want to help the people who perform experiments on them.

Male Professor: It is indeed surprising, and it raises a couple of questions which are leading many researchers to think twice about using apes in scientific research. The first question is, “Why do we continue to use apes as research subjects? Hasn't technology provided us tools to replace the apes?”

The answer is that yes, technology has developed blood tests and tissue cultures that can effectively replace apes in some experiments. For example, pharmaceutical companies can test the toxicity of chemicals in vitro rather than in vivo. In other words, they can test chemicals in a test tube rather than test it in a living ape. However, one possible problem is that cytotoxicity in vitro might not mirror in vivo results. That is, something that is poisonous to a cell in a test tube might not be poisonous to a cell in a living being.

A second common question is whether or not the benefits outweigh the costs of using apes in medical research. Primates are very expensive animals to raise in captivity, and because they are particularly sensitive to the stress of being used in medical experiments, some researchers think that they are not ideal candidates for medical research. After all, stress can skew experimental outcomes. Also, there are some diseases that do NOT affect apes in the same ways that they affect humans. For example, one disease for which apes were expected to provide information was AIDS. However, researchers have found that in chimpanzees, HIV seldom progresses to AIDS. The program has failed. And now there are hundreds of chimps that were injected with HIV that currently need to be cared for and housed for the remainder of their lives―up to 50 years. That's 50 years of research money that is unavailable for anything else. At a lifetime cost of $300,000 to $500,000 per chimpanzee, that is a gargantuan expenditure.

Today, animal-based research continues to play a key role in the development of medicine and medical technology. Because all mammals share certain biological features, like having a backbone or using lungs to breathe, many processes that exist in the human body can be studied in animals. For example, much of what is known about our immune system comes from our research on mice. Studies of sheep and dogs have contributed to our understanding of the cardiovascular system. Such studies can be even more effective if scientists use “designer” animals. These animals are genetically modified to allow researchers to target a particular disease. For example, Harvard University’s OncoMouse® carries a gene that encourages the growth of certain human cancers.

Another advantage of animal-based research is that it allows scientists to test new surgical procedures or medical products without risking human suffering or loss of life. One important example of this is the toxicology test. This test is used to determine whether or not particular chemicals are harmful to humans. Although it frequently causes a great deal of pain and suffering in the animal test subjects, it is necessary for many researchers who need to know whether or not certain substances are safe for humans.